Wind farm operators in the Altamont Pass are offering to shut down half of their electricity-producing windmills during the winter to reduce bird deaths and to replace them all with more modern machines within 13 years.

But the proposal, which Alameda County officials will consider Thursday, comes with strings attached. The offer is good only if an environmental group drops its lawsuit over the deaths of thousands of birds.

The Center for Biological Diversity says it won’t drop the suit it filed against wind farm operators in November because their plan to reduce bird deaths doesn’t go far enough.

The lawsuit is “the only leverage we have” to force wind farm operators and county officials to tackle the problem of bird deaths, said Jeff Miller, a group spokesman. In a June 24 decision, the judge hearing the case declined to dismiss it, and it could go to trial in the fall.

A California Energy Commission study estimated wind turbines in the Altamont kill 881 to 1,300 birds of prey a year, including as many as 116 federally protected golden eagles.

These so-called “wind-farm”s are just a way for the people in the big wind business to make mountains of money while raping the land and killing federally protected species. If you look far enough, I’m sure Karl Rove owns a company that sells windmills to these people.

Bush bombed Iraq so the explosions would causes wind that Kove and his billionaire buddies could “harvest.” You don’t harvest wind. You harvest tofu. You steal wind from the very eagles that need it to survive. When will the nightmare end?

Seriously, is there a single source of energy that has not been condemned by liberal pseudo environmentalists? Have they proposed any favorable alternatives? What in the hell are we supposed to do?

Don’t get me wrong, I was raised in pristine areas of Alaska, and I am hooked on recreational and artistic activities that require relatively untouched areas of wilderness and ocean bottoms. I consider myself an environmentalist, if one can exist without being an extremely unrealistic militant. So please don’t flame me if I’m not the first to stitch yellow ribbons for the dead birds.

Faith+1July 6, 2005

I say relocate the wind farms to Washington DC. Hot air alone would quadruple the output, and, really, who would mind the occasional politician or lobbyist getting decapitated by one on occasion?

I say we put a large mirrored solar collector underneath the wind farm and have ourselves a barbeque.

j.pickensJuly 7, 2005

The sum total of energy put in to produce all those windmills barely breaks even with the energy output.
Now, if you idle them during prime bird activity months, they’ll most likely be net energy consumers.

Remember, when someone spews statistics on how each windmill pays back many times over, look around. If you look at the Altamont pass, as I have, you will see that many, many of the windmills are sitting idle. Just because a few of them are postioned optimally, and have the benefit of good maintenance, you have to take all of them into account when doing an energy balance. Not surprisingly, I have never been able to find documentation of the actual energy produced there vs. energy put in to build and maintain the windfarm. Gee, wonder why that is?

liberal psuedo environmentalistJuly 7, 2005

Seriously, is there a single source of energy that has not been condemned by liberal pseudo environmentalists?

Air pollution from burning biomass for fuel in California has already been challenged, dude!

/end wan attempt at Dude humor…

I’m always curious why air pollution is the pet peeve of Liberal Environmentalists but their homes are full of smoke. Marijuana produces far in excess of carcinogens to the lungs than do, say, Camels. Much less to the public airs that everyone else has to breathe.

JimJuly 7, 2005

GADS! The environut liberal whackos wont be satisfied until we are all sitting in the dark, freezing or burning up, scratching messages on rocks which we pitch at each other for correspondence.

JonJuly 7, 2005

I’m afraid not, Jim. They’ll just say how scratching on rocks is ‘tearing at the flesh of Mother Gaia’.